


the ghost at the end of the song

by taizi



Series: is there a better bet than love? [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Character Study, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Pre-Fall Crowley (Good Omens), Reconciliation, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: “He didn’t mean to,” Raphael argued, as if stricken by what she was implying. “Michael, you know him. He only asked questions. He is naive and curious and full of mischief, but that hardly makes him a—a—”He searched for the right word, groping for the knowledge that hadn’t existed before the War.Michael told him. “Demon,” she said. “Evil spirit.”She wasn’t happy to say it. She wasn’t happy to watch the expressions parade across Raphael’s face. Horror, and hurt, and anger, and grief.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Raphael (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Raphael (Good Omens), Michael & Raphael (Good Omens)
Series: is there a better bet than love? [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1406680
Comments: 167
Kudos: 471





	1. a ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he was pointing at the moon but i was looking at his hand. he was dead anyway, a ghost. i’m surprised i saw his hand at all. all this was prepared for me. all this was set in motion long ago. i live in someone else’s future. _i stayed as long as i could,_ he said. _now look at the moon._
> 
> —richard siken, _the worm king's lullaby_

It isn’t that Raphael lives in seclusion. He always has a smile for Michael when she comes to see him, beckoning her in with his hands that were made to hold and help others. There is nothing unwelcoming about his domain. 

It’s just that Raphael has no tolerance for even casual cruelty, and no longer bothers to bottle his temper. Every time Gabriel has come into these rooms to visit his elder brother it has ended in an argument that always seems to be the worst one they’ve ever had, and Gabriel is always on the losing end. 

Michael can’t count how many times he’s appeared in her office with singed feathers and a hangdog expression. She would sigh and sort his wings out and secretly admire Raphael’s control. None of Gabriel’s feathers would be broken or damaged, just magnificently ruffled to the point of absurdity, which would have made the trek from the greenhouse all the way to administration rather embarrassing. 

“Just leave him alone,” she would scold. “You don’t know how to get along.”

“But all we do is leave him alone,” Gabriel would say, guileless and sincere in a way that makes up for how entirely ignorant he can be. “He’s been alone ever since the War. I worry about him up there.”

And there’s very little Michael can say to that. 

Time is relative in Heaven. The angels have to remain aware of it in order to keep track of the short-lived humans they’ve been tasked with, to keep track of the Plan; but they are aware of its passing in the same vague, uninterested way that a human is aware of the weather when they’ve been inside all day. 

In the greenhouse, it isn’t even a concept. There is no _sense_ of time, or entropy, or the movement of planets and stars. In Raphael’s domain, nothing has changed since the day of the Fall. Michael thinks that even the air is the same; the faintest smell of metal and electricity and something burning, drowned out only by the lush, earthy vibrancy of life in his herbs and flowering things. 

Michael, Azrael, Heylel and Raphael are the oldest of God’s creations, waved into being when She wanted for conversation. It’s an easy enough thing for any of them to manipulate the fabric of the universe; they were there when it was woven, they know which strings to pull to get results. It’s how Azrael ferries souls into the twilight of death, how Heylel used to carry dawn across the sky, how Raphael can reach into sickness and find health, and it’s how Michael has maintained the stillness of mind needed to oversee millions of angels without breaking under the pressure and taking a swan dive out the emergency exit window.

They all have their little specialties, because She made them with purpose and destination. Raphael has what he was gifted with and also what he learned. The mechanics of time are something of a plaything to him. He is the only one of the whole Host who has perfected it. 

Well, Raphael and one other. A starsmith, if Michael remembers correctly. A Maker. On the morning She brought them all up to watch the stars being formed, Raphael made the rookie error of humoring one of the Maker’s endless questions. After that he always had a tag-along, a twin shadow who absolutely never ran out of things to wonder about. 

Raphael’s siblings teased him but it was good-natured. The fact that he came to love the Maker's company only made them tease more. The two of them became quite the pair, and Michael would always smile when she stepped into Raphael’s gardens, because the lonely place had become so lively now that he had such a dear friend. 

She found them there one day, the Maker covered in starstuff as though he’d rushed all the way to the greenhouse from work without bothering to give himself a good dusting. They were laughing together, and their hands were busy with something set on the table between them, and if Michael were human she would have gone into cardiac arrest right then and there, because those were _live nebulae._

Michael shouted and scolded, horrified at what might have happened to either of them had they missed their grip or lost their focus. The Maker cowered, golden eyes afraid, but Raphael waved her down. 

“It’s alright, sister. Look, we’ve paused time. We’re in no danger. Calm down before Mother comes over and we all get into trouble.”

Once she looked more closely, she could see that it was so, and then she felt awful for giving the poor Maker such a scare. He accepted her apology with the ease of a creature who had never known hurt, scooting over to make room for her at the table. Michael ended up holding his fiery river of hair in her lap to reduce the risk of sitting on it. 

“Raphael is helping me create a binary system,” the Maker said happily, as bright as the stars in his hands. “He didn’t think he could do it but I told him that was stupid.”

“It’s not what I was made for,” Raphael said. It sounded like an age-old argument, any true ire rubbed away by fondness and familiarity. “I wasn’t born knowing it like you were.”

“So? I had the knowledge and gave it to you. Simple as that. You archangels make everything so complicated.”

Michael remembers marveling at how the duty of creation could be passed back and forth, the stoppage of time harboring them on all sides like a safety fence. She remembers being impressed by the ease in which those two angels could do things they weren’t meant to do. 

The little Maker plucked at the thread of time with a deftness that not even Michael could manage, keeping their corner of the universe very still while Raphael worked. 

“You’re better at it than I am,” he complained. “We ought to switch jobs. Your garden’s easier to tend than mine.”

“Oh, look what you did,” Raphael said, straightening suddenly. “You distracted me. I put them too close together.”

The Maker leaned over. “What’s the problem? It looks great.”

“From earth, it’ll look like one star,” Raphael pointed out. He looked disheartened by his apparent failure, and it was an odd look to see on someone as beautiful and resplendent as him. “You can’t even tell there’s two.”

“It’ll be a nice surprise for the humans when they find out,” the Maker said. He lifted the whole system out of Raphael’s hands, holding it up at eye-level and giving it a frank appraisal. “I think they’ll love it. I know I do. Our first collaboration!”

Not long after that, Heylel led the rebellion. Roughly half the angels in Heaven were ripped away from the Host. Some Fell, some were killed, and Raphael’s friend was somewhere among them. 

He was inconsolable. He was so lost to his grief that Michael could hardly bear it. The casualty reports came back, and his friend's name was not listed with the dead, but that could hardly be much comfort.

“He’s not who he used to be,” she said as gently as she knew how. She couldn’t do this on her own. With Heylel and his conspirators thrown into the pit, and Azrael busier now than he had ever been before, she needed someone to lean on. “He’s changed now. The one you love is gone.”

“He didn’t mean to,” Raphael argued, as if stricken by what she was implying. “Michael, you _know_ him. He only asked questions. He is naive and curious and full of mischief, but that hardly makes him a—a—” 

He searched for the right word, groping for the knowledge that hadn’t existed before the War. 

Michael told him. “Demon,” she said. “Evil spirit.”

She wasn’t happy to say it. She wasn’t happy to watch the expressions parade across Raphael’s face. Horror, and hurt, and anger, and grief.

He was wavering, it seemed— teetering on the knife’s edge of some great and terrible precipice. 

So soon after such terrible loss, Michael was perhaps too guarded. She was terrified of losing anyone else. She didn’t want Raphael to follow his friend down. 

“You _know_ him,” Raphael said again, beseeching. Trying to make sense of it. Trying to find the next step in the dark. 

“I did once,” Michael replied. 

It closed a door between them. Six thousand years later, Michael is still struggling with how to open it again.

Gabriel is on _vacation_ , and the Plan is permanently derailed, and a rogue agent is fraternizing with a demon, and all of it is happening with God’s rubber stamp of approval. Michael finds herself at a loss. She wants Raphael’s friendship again. His sense of safety and wry good humor. 

When she steps inside his greenhouse, Raphael looks up from a flowerbed that hasn’t changed in six thousand years. He smiles when he sees her, like always, and sits back on his heels. 

“Hello,” he says. “Another headache? I've started keeping that tea in stock for you, you know.”

“I don't need the tea,” she retorts, helping herself to the bench seat she usually sits on. “I can’t come see you just to say hello?”

“You can. It’s just that you don’t,” Raphael replies easily. He returns his attention to the growing things at hand, coaxing stubbornly exposed roots back beneath the bed of soil. “If this is about Armageddon again, I’m happy to reiterate how _little_ I care.”

Michael blinks. “Haven’t you heard?” What is she saying, of course he hadn’t. Who would have told him, the plants? “Armageddon didn’t happen. It… we had it wrong.”

That gets his full attention, his eyes snapping to meet hers with a force not unlike lightning. 

“You had it _wrong?”_

“That’s what we were told,” Michael mutters. She gritted this out the first time, but having had to eat this particular crow in front of the entire army of Heaven has taken the sting out of it for this retelling. Now the only thing she feels is exhausted. “The Great Plan that we were following was obstructed. And when we tried to bring the obstructors to justice, they were spared. Which means…it must have been Her Plan for us to fail.”

Raphael stares at her, with more feeling on his face than Michael has seen since before he held time still in this garden. She wonders what he’s thinking. He’s been firmly against the idea of the end of the world from the beginning. Every time it has come up in conversation, every time Gabriel tried to bring him onto the team, every time Uriel mentioned finally putting those demons in their rightful place, it has resulted in a knock-down, drag-out fight that left no one feeling good. 

And now he’s hearing that he was _right._ The only voice raised in defiance, and he was right. 

Unlike the vindication Michael would have expected, he only looks as tired as she feels. 

“So Heaven _does_ make mistakes,” he says bitterly. 

“Raphael,” Michael says quietly. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I did the best with what I knew back then.” 

“I know,” Raphael says. Always so fair, even when it must hurt him to be. He pushes himself upright and comes around to sit beside her on the bench. There’s a space left open on his other side, where there is always a space left open, and Michael wonders how it is possible to exist in the crush of perpetual grief without losing oneself entirely. “Tell me, sister. I’m listening. Who were these obstructors who dared to save the world?”

She almost wishes he wouldn’t say it like that, as if Heaven is as much the villain of the story as Hell is, but… it’s perspective, isn’t it? Maybe that’s the point God is trying to make with this new pilot program, sending them down to earth to live as humans do. From _their_ point of view, whether Heaven won the war or lost, any end of the world would probably be considered a rather poor outcome. 

“If you must know, it was one of _your_ principalities,” Michael says, tugging her shirt sleeves straight in annoyed little snaps of her wrists, just to give herself something to do with her hands. “As well as his demonic counterpart.”

“One of mine?” Raphael brightens a bit, some of the long-lost light coming back to his eyes. “I always had a good feeling about that bunch. Which one?”

“Aziraphael. He’s gone by Azira _phale_ for the last six millennia, Lord only knows why.”

“Have you tried asking him? Of course you haven’t. What’s this about a demon?”

He looks as though he’s trying not to look hopeful. This _would_ be the part of the story he would be hungry for. Michael stills the angry plucking of her hands and gazes at him, trying to adjust her perspective and see him fully, trying to understand.

There’s something about Raphael that is always going to make Michael ache down to her core. He is a once-central character removed from the story, set apart in his unchanging garden, because he refused to move on and forget.

Even if she tried, Michael would not be able to remember that Maker’s face. She would not recognize his voice if she heard it again. She does not know his name. If she focuses very hard, she can summon a vague picture of cascading red hair, of hands that could never be still, but the rest of him is lost to her. It is the cost of moving on, the price of time. 

Raphael refused to pay it. Refuses still. He will heal the sick and injured, and answer all the prayers that make it to him past the efficient automated system, and he will brew soothing drinks whenever Michael comes to him looking a little frayed along the edges, and he will smile. 

But he will also weep in secret. He will wonder why. He will ask it of God, over and over, so desperately that Her continued silence rings loudly even in Michael’s ears. He will not forget. 

Michael used to think it foolish, but now she finds herself wondering if maybe she was wrong about that, too. It would hurt to remember Heylel’s smile but it might also be something of a comfort. Her brother, who used to be beautiful, who used to be kind, who used to be loved. No beauty or kindness or love could ever be wasted. That it existed at all, however briefly, is its own miracle. 

She tilts her head back and looks through the glass roof at the stars whirling overhead. There is one in particular that stands out, piercing stubbornly through the dark as though it has a point to make. If she looked any closer, she would see that the one star was actually two. There was a twin flame just behind it, pulled into the same orbit. 

Someday she’ll look closer. 

For now, Michael tries to do what is kind instead of what is Right, and says, “The demon's name is Crowley. He's been a pain in the ass since the Seventh Day of Creation.”

Raphael doesn't laugh like he used to, but he still laughs. It's still lovely. Michael finds herself smiling, and tells him as much as she can. It isn't a lot, she realizes. She doesn't know the whole story.

She would like to. All things considered, it's probably a rather good one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is going to be told in three parts ! chapter 2 should be up soon :) 
> 
> between now and then im going to try to reply to all the comments everyone left on the previous story. im sorry if it takes me a long time to get back to you, or if i forget to entirely, just please know that i treasure them all <3 this series is a joy for me to write, and it means the world to me that it's been so warmly embraced by so many of you !!


	2. here and where you are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you will drift as i do, from head to head  
> swollen with words you never said, swollen with hoarded love.  
> i exist in two places, here and where you are.  
>   
> —margaret atwood, _corpse song_

It’s time to leave the garden.

A leafy vine curls around Raphael’s wrist in farewell. The plants will miss him; they press the knowledge against him as insistently as they’re capable of, soft and green and loving. He’ll miss them, too, and a wave of his hand ensures that they will be safe and well-fed for however long he’s gone. 

“Wish me luck,” he asks of the vine. With another squeeze, it passes Raphael the idea of the closest thing a plant knows of smiling, and then relinquishes his arm. 

It’s the best send-off he could have hoped for. 

Depending on one’s perspective, it has been either moments or millennia since Raphael last walked the streets of gold. They’re much busier now, teeming with the souls of humans who bustle as much in the afterlife as they ever did on earth. Some of them even got together and formed a committee, and the place is less of an architectural eyesore now that actual city planners are on the job. 

Once a soul gets a knack for life, it never really loses it. How Gabriel thought humans would be content to just sit around and sing praises all day long _forever_ , Raphael will never understand. 

The long walk to the administration building is an enjoyable one. With his greenhouse stubbornly situated where it has been since the beginning of the concept of the universe, despite his siblings’ best attempts at relocating him past the gate where the rest of them have made their home, Raphael is no stranger to curious humans poking their heads in at him from time to time. He is as familiar to them as their silly traffic lights are, and within a few city blocks he has managed to collect a few companions. 

It’s a fair-haired boy from Thessaly and his curly-headed lover who fall into step beside Raphael, one on either side. They are bright and boisterous and eternally getting on someone’s nerves, and Raphael is fond enough of them that they carry his Blessing, not that they have need for such a thing anymore.

He smiles at their ruckus-by-way-of-hello and starts counting seconds in his head; he gets to eight, and by then they have gravitated back to one another, as they always do. 

Now both are on Raphael’s left, hands that didn’t get held often enough in life clasped firmly between them, and greeting them is a much easier task. 

“Hello to you, too,” Raphael says. “Ligyron, how’s your ankle?”

“Don’t call me that! It’s hardly heroic,” comes his predictable reply, as whinging as his birth name would suggest. “My ankle is fine, just twinges a bit where Paris got me with that arrow. Not so much pain as the memory of it, I suppose.”

The God-touched are a unique bunch. Suffering of any sort shouldn’t be possible in the Promised Land, and yet Raphael has kept busy; Saul of Tarsus’ execution blow still troubles him, and sweet Yeshua’s wrists sometimes ache, and don’t get him _started_ on poor Joan. It’s as if they can’t quite shed their mantle at the door. 

(Raphael makes a mental note to reel Azrael in for a discussion on how best to solve this problem. If Ibn Sina could be lured out of heaven’s library for longer than five minutes, his thoughts would be of great help, and perhaps Al-Zahrawi might be willing to lend an ear as well. There are plenty of geniuses roaming about eternity who dedicated their life to Raphael’s arts— he would be happy to call on them all in the name of healing, and he is sure they would be as happy to answer.)

For now, Raphael says, “And you, Patroclus? Keeping your beloved out of trouble, I hope?”

The dark-skinned boy grins. “Of course I’m not. A whole army couldn’t keep Achilles out of trouble, and believe me, they tried.”

Achilles shoves him, and Patroclus shoves back, and Raphael can see exactly where this is going. He extracts himself from the playful scuffle with the practiced ease of Elder-Brother-To-Pretty-Much-Everyone and leaves them to it. 

The crowds thin the farther he goes, and soon enough the warmth of humanity is left behind him and the looming gate is ahead. This one isn’t made of shining pearls, it’s an uninspired steel number. It’s impossible to feel cold in Heaven, but Raphael manages it as he passes through. 

The municipal building is grand and bright and strangely like a quiet museum for all the legions of angels who must work there. The polished hall is empty save himself and a few harried Powers rushing in the opposite direction, looking very much like a handful of angels late for work.

Raphael agreeably stands to one side and holds the door for them. 

“Thanks,” one of the Powers tosses over her shoulder. When their eyes meet, her face goes slack with shock, and she abruptly trips over her own feet and loses what looks like years’ worth of paperwork. 

Oh, dear. What happened there? A quick miracle keeps the pages from scattering, as effortless as deciding they simply shouldn’t do anything but land at her feet in a neat stack, and only then does Raphael let the door close between them. 

He is not so much in a hurry as he is on a mission. His stride is unbothered, his gaze roaming with more distaste than curiosity. The administration building isn’t a place meant for people. The angles and dimensions are all wrong, surreal and bizarre, meant for both physical corporations and limitless trueforms to inhabit simultaneously.

Raphael’s goal is the earthbound elevator. This is where he stops, head cocked to one side, because the elevator is roped off. There is a little sign that says “Down For Maintenance” in tacky golden lettering. 

Raphael considers this briefly. He has no idea if this was an honest attempt to keep him Above or if he is supposed to politely agree with the illusion that a maintenance sign would be enough to stop him. 

It reeks of Michael, and Raphael can feel his temper stirring. What did she expect? That he would put his head down and go back to his work at the first obstacle? 

Raphael coaxed all the information out of her that he could, and it wasn’t enough. He wants to know more. He wants to know what it was _exactly_ that derailed the Great Plan. Heaven was wrong, but even more significantly, Heaven _admitted_ that they were wrong. 

And if they were wrong about something as big as the apocalypse, what else could they have been wrong about? 

The old party line, perhaps?

Over and over and over, Raphael was told that the Fallen were as good as dead. Demons were shells, empty husks. Their virtues were burned out of them along with their Grace. There was nothing left inside them that could be called Holy. That is what the whole Falling business _meant._

And there were times when an angel would come to him after an encounter with a demon, wounded beyond anything Raphael had ever seen before. _Hellfire_ , Gabriel told him. _Look at what they are willing to do to us._

It was startling, and it was scary, and Raphael had very little choice but to believe them when dying angels were brought beneath his healing hands. And yet he always questioned. He always wondered.

And now… now! There is a demon on the earth named Crowley who helped an angel named Aziraphale avert destiny itself. No matter what their reasons might have been, no matter what ulterior motives might be lurking behind the deed itself, they didn’t agree with the end of the world.

 _A_ _demon_ , Raphael thinks with the same manic wonder he’s thought it with about a hundred times now. A demon who wanted badly enough to save humanity that he would make himself an enemy of Hell. 

So there are things he wants. Things he cares about. He is capable of thoughts and feelings beyond hatred and greed. He is capable of wanting and caring— which means he must also be capable of forgiveness and kindness and yes, even love. 

Which means sweet K̸̢̙͉̓ȃ̸̧̧̱̓k̵̢̠̺̿a̴̞̮̐͂͜b̴͖͇͋͐͜e̸͇̩̔͗͘l̶̝̲̊ might have survived his Fall after all.

If there is even a chance, even the slightest hope, an out-of-order elevator is hardly going to keep him from finding out. Raphael is not afraid of taking the express route. 

He takes great delight in crossing the room to the wall of windows. He’ll need all his wings for this one, and unfolds each pair with an eager snap. He pushes open the Emergency Exit window and leans out far enough to get a good look at the sheer drop. 

_I’m coming,_ Raphael thinks. It takes the shape of a prayer. _Please be somewhere._

“Um,” a meek voice says from somewhere behind him. “Um. Sir?”

Raphael looks over his shoulder. There are two angels in the hall, of the order below the principalities, staring at Raphael like they’ve absolutely never seen anything like him before. It must be odd to find someone dangling more than halfway out an open window, so he can forgive them their slack jaws.

(It doesn’t occur to Raphael that in six thousand years, the only angels to have seen him were his siblings, his students and those who needed his care. He is something of a legend, especially to those mass-produced after the War, who have only heard stories of the archangel’s beauty and kindness and grief. A brave few have approached the magnificent greenhouse, have come close enough to see the greenery through the glass, but no farther. 

Raphael’s audience is not staring at him because he is dangling out of a window. Or not _only_ because of that.)

“Let Michael know I’ve gone to lunch,” he says, and lets himself fall. 

It’s a rather quick trip, because Raphael is much too eager to travel the physical way. Once he’s past Saint Peter’s gate, he cheats, tugging on the familiar threads of space-time the way he imagines a human might guide the lead of a faithful hound. Between one second and the next, he is sailing through the lower atmosphere of earth like one of his lost friend's shooting stars. 

He winds up in a place called Bengaluru. A little off the mark. He passes through the people there, unseen, taking careful note of the way they dress and speak and interact, and only waves himself into a physical corporation when he’s got the feel for it. As a healer— as _the_ Healer— it takes little effort to design himself a mortal form. 

The body has brown skin and rich dark hair and a proud nose, but most importantly, strong hands. He flexes them thoughtfully, considers the blood and bone and tendon of them, and decides they’ll do him well enough. 

Raphael approaches the first smiling face he sees, delivering the appropriate greeting and receiving a cheerful one in turn. 

“So sorry to bother you,” he says, “but I’m a bit turned around. I’m trying to get to London.”

The human blinks, seems to parse him for a moment, and then laughs, not unkindly. 

“You’re more than a bit turned around, friend. Have you got a phone?”

Raphael does now, reaching into his back pocket where the object the human is expecting has materialized. He hands the sleek flat thing over, and the human taps away at it with deft fingers. When she turns it in her hands to show Raphael, who is horribly curious at this point, there is a little map on the screen with apparent directions to the closest airport. 

Raphael is certainly not going to use a plane to get there, but he has a map now. He thanks the woman, and heals her arthritis, and heads north. 

He overshoots it by a couple hundred miles, has to double back. The auras he’s looking for are tricky to pin down, well-camouflaged amongst their humans, but he can tell he’s getting close. 

Raphael checks his phone— terribly useful little thing, he can see why heaven adopted something similar— and it asserts his current location as someplace called the South Downs. It’s a coastal area, with lovely chalk hills and rolling fields of green, and he’s only just begun admiring the view when he feels it:

A sudden surge of energy, occult and ethereal both, appearing so abruptly they must have miracled themselves here. 

Raphael drops from his flight to the ground and renders himself unknowable. It wouldn’t do to catch them unawares and accidentally start a fight.

As they come into view through the trees, Raphael realizes that these can’t be the ones he’s come to find. They’re much too New, and while the angel is a principality, they aren’t one of his; he would Know it if they bore his name. 

He doesn’t move on, though. How could he? There are two creatures walking beside the angel, and Raphael finds himself struck by them. 

_Oh, this is what a demon is,_ Raphael thinks, his eyes wide. There is a definite lacking to them that takes his breath away, an empty space that the light of the Host should fill, and the source of power they draw from is not pure or Divine, it is… bitter and dark. It feels like a hungry animal with too many teeth. 

And yet, the two of them are as complex as any other living creature, their immortal souls teeming with more years than a human’s ever could. They must clearly know what they have lost, must move around the absence of their Grace like someone searching for the stairs in the dark, but they are not _husks._ They are not the burnt-out remains of someone once worth God’s mercy. 

The smaller of the two is carrying a cardboard tray of brightly-colored drinks in clear plastic cups, and the larger is scowling as if the beautiful countryside has done them a personal disservice somehow. 

“Are you sure about this, Nanael?” she asks disdainfully. “Why did we have to come all the way out here?”

“I told you,” says the principality, “it’s safer where there’s less people around. If this goes awry and someone gets hurt—” 

“We could fix it.”

“—Zira would be _furious,_ ” Nanael goes on firmly. Their mind is clearly made up that it is best to avoid that particular outcome, and Raphael watches with wonder as the demon concedes. 

There is a quiet corner of his mind that is cultivating a breath-taking anger, hoarding it away for a more appropriate time and place, and for a more worthy audience. 

Empty shells, he was told. Evil spirits. _Nothing good would have survived the Fall,_ was the party line he was fed, over and over and over again. _They are not who they once were._

And yet, here is proof to the contrary. Nanael points the larger demon into a spell circle and the demon goes with a roll of her eyes. 

The etchings aren’t entirely Enochian, and at a glance Raphael doesn’t recognize the complex array of runes beneath the demon’s feet. She doesn’t seem to be bound in place there, but she’s eyeing the runes warily enough that the caretaker half of Raphael’s heart urges him forward. 

He doesn’t make it more than a few steps before the circle lights up. The principality’s eyes are bright with focus, hands extended and full of intent. The magic coaxed out is bitter and full of teeth, as far from a blessing as any angel is capable of. 

This is a curse. The demon cries out. 

It’s the sound of pain, sharp and unrelenting, and Raphael reaches for his staff before he’s aware of summoning it in the first place. Fallen or not, Raphael can’t stand by and watch this. 

Then, abruptly, the active circle goes dormant again. The thread of magic is cut, and the demon is sitting up on her knees, shoving wild hanks of hair out of her eyes, whole and unharmed. She looks more irritated than anything.

“Jesus _Christ,_ Mars, that _hurt!”_

“For the last time, leave him out of this,” Nanael retorts, but they’re rushing forward. The concentration from earlier has been replaced with concern, their eyes darting across the demon’s corporation. “I’m sorry, Gremory, I thought I had it that time. Are you alright?”

“She’s fine,” the smaller demon says. His voice is so quiet that had Raphael been human he might not have heard it at all. “Don’t let her guilt you into another favor, Nanael. Crowley’s still sore about how the last favor ended.”

 _Crowley_. Raphael’s interest sharpens. These three are familiar with at least half of the anti-apocalyptic pair Raphael has come to earth to find. 

Gremory accepts Nanael’s offered hands, hauling herself up to her feet. With a swift snap, her mane of hair is wrangled back into a neat plait, and only then does she turn on the other demon with a withering glare. 

“Wow, Murmur. Here I am being martyred for the cause, and you don’t so much as bat an eye. Where’s the love?”

Murmur blinks impassively and seems to consider the question that even Raphael could tell was largely rhetorical with more gravitas than it actually deserves. A moment drags by, but neither Nanael or Gremory rush the pale creature for a response, as though used to these deliberations from him.

Finally, Murmur says, “It’s right here.” 

He goes up on tiptoe to kiss her. Despite her apparent ire, Gremory bends to accommodate him. Nanael rolls their eyes and visibly gives the two up for a lost cause, digging a smartphone out of their pocket and muttering something about a warlock. 

Raphael watches the scene, fascinated, staff forgotten in his hand. Gremory and Murmur don’t shine with youth and adoration the way Patroclus and Achilles do, but there is plain devotion between them, as clear as the blue sky above. It is not righteous, but it certainly isn’t wicked, which only leaves the obvious middle ground. 

_How remarkable,_ Raphael thinks. _How very human._

And his heart is full, of want and anticipation and hope, so much so that he can hardly bear it. 

_K̸̢̙͉̓ȃ̸̧̧̱̓k̵̢̠̺̿a̴̞̮̐͂͜b̴͖͇͋͐͜e̸͇̩̔͗͘l̶̝̲̊. If any goodness could have remained, it would be yours. Please be somewhere._

He watches, both thrumming with impatience and happy to observe, as the little trio ready themselves to leave. Murmur passes the drinks around, and Nanael and Gremory both make the same humming noises of satisfaction as they sip through their straws. The peace lasts for all of five seconds, and then the two are arguing hotly about where the curse went wrong and which cardinal direction this and that rune should have faced, and miracle themselves away mid-word. 

Raphael traces their destination with a miracle and prepares himself to follow, except Murmur has not gone yet. 

He is standing in their little clearing, oversized cardigan hanging tent-like off his rail-thin frame, fingers peeking out of the sleeves only to hold his pink drink in front of his chest like a shield, the dandelion puff of his hair blown into absurdity by the playful breeze. 

His eyes are milky white, and Raphael would have guessed them blind, if not for the unerring way they bore into his own. 

There is birdsong happening up above their heads somewhere. There is the faintest smell of sea-salt in the air. The world has narrowed down to this one stretch of grass. 

“ **Tell the truth** ,” Murmur compels. His voice is still eerily soft, for all that it resounds in Raphael’s ears like a chorus. “Why are you here?”

“I’m searching for someone I love,” Raphael says. The words trip off his tongue of their own accord, but he doesn’t fight them for a moment. It _is_ the truth, and he would have told it with or without the compulsion. 

Murmur blinks. He studies Raphael for a moment longer, his expression giving absolutely nothing away. Raphael wonders, in a burst of some startling amalgamation of nostalgia and homesickness and loss, what manner of angel Murmur was before he lost it all to sulfur and fire. 

It hardly matters. Whatever he was then, he is tiny now, and defenseless, with only his words as a weapon. In a deliberate act, he chose to let his companions go on without him, and now he stands alone in front of an archangel and seems to judge him against some unknowable criteria.

Raphael has never been judged by anyone before, and he can’t say he appreciates the practical experience. 

Murmur blinks again, and then takes a sip of his drink. 

“Okay,” he says. His voice is as quiet as the air. He is gone a split-second later, and Raphael doesn’t realize until almost a full minute has passed that somehow he passed muster in that strange creature’s unblind eyes. 

And with that backwards permission granted, Raphael grasps the end of the string he tied to them and follows. 

Later, he will take in the bookshop. He will take in its ancient walls and its semi-sentient state of guardianship, the shelves upon shelves of tomes painstakingly collected from various eras of human history. He will take in the toothed warning of the layered wards that prowl watchful circles around the unexpected guest he makes. He will think about the way his sudden appearance startled the demons and the angel from the Downs into clustering together, to protect and be protected by; the way Nanael’s instinct was to cover their friends and raise their scepter; the way that a much more powerful principality moved to shield them all, a fiery sword springing into his practiced hand. 

Later. 

But now, Raphael only has eyes for the frozen figure in the center of the room. 

His eyes are not quite the same. The untamed rivers of his hair are shorn. Oh, but the face is so dear. The trembling hands, the warm, star-bright core that is as beautiful now as it was six thousand years ago, the mouth parted around the beginning of one or one hundred impossible questions. 

It is him. He is here. He has been here all this time. 

Raphael stares at him from barely an arm’s length away. It is suddenly so painful just to draw air into decorative lungs, just to stand under the weight of gravity, just to be anywhere that isn’t at that demon's side. 

“Forgive me,” Raphael whispers. “I didn’t know you were alive.” 

The familiar demon jolts, some painful aborted movement that looked like a step forward before courage failed him. The principality who must be Aziraphale is gathering himself for a fight, and behind him, the younger creatures are rallying in a similar fashion. There is a single fragile moment, hanging like a thread between them all, in which the possibilities for how this encounter might end are absolutely infinite. 

And then the red-headed starmaker says, in a voice Raphael thought he would never hear again, “You remember me?”

Raphael doesn’t know whether to laugh or sob. 

“K̸̢̙͉̓ȃ̸̧̧̱̓k̵̢̠̺̿a̴̞̮̐͂͜b̴͖͇͋͐͜e̸͇̩̔͗͘l̶̝̲̊,” he says, his hands reaching out as if for benediction. “I have done nothing but remember you since the moment you were lost to me.”

Of course there is much to discuss. There are millennia to catch up on. There are, above all, ancient hurts to heal. 

But for now, there is only this: the weight of a long-lost friend hurtling across empty space to crash into arms that are, finally, finally, there to catch him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kakabel (or kokabiel) is a fallen angel known as the angel of stars. my buddy @clankclunk on tumblr helped me decide on crowley's angelsona, which only seemed fitting, as they've helped me name everyone else in this series so far <3


	3. on the other shore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love you with a love that reaches you on the other shore. that dark, unknown shore where, in order to follow you, my love stumbles forth blindly, bleeding, but always holding you tight.
> 
> —dulce maría loynaz, _poem xci_

Several things have happened all at once, and all of them are in competition with each other to be the most shocking. Aziraphale needs a moment to compartmentalize, otherwise he’ll just end up gaping wordlessly like the children are who’ve clustered in behind him. 

First of all, the most immediate: the weight of his old sword at his side. Summoning it was pure instinct and Aziraphale has no idea what it means that it sprang so readily to his hand. The shape of the hilt beneath the curl of his fingers is reassuring, though the flames are a bit over-the-top. He douses them with an absent-minded thought, and the room is slightly more still, and more calm, once they’ve gone. 

Next, the presence of the archangel Raphael. Aziraphale has never met this particular angel before, though he has certainly heard the stories— _everyone_ has. After millennia of self-imposed solitude he is _here_ , of all places, in the bookshop. He is here, with eyes only for Crowley, and that, perhaps, is why Aziraphale reached so quickly for his sword. 

Because Crowley, dear, wily, quick-witted Crowley, _froze._ And then he flung himself into Raphael’s waiting arms. And they are embracing now, with a familiarity that speaks of a history of embraces. 

And that, Aziraphale has to admit, is the most shocking thing. 

But in the seconds it takes Aziraphale to organize and catalogue his surprise and confusion, Crowley seems to have remembered himself. He springs away from Raphael as though burned, so abruptly he nearly trips over the upturned edge of the rug underfoot. 

(His long-limbed corporation is a scuttling thing, a far cry from the lean muscle of his swift serpent form, and in a less uncertain setting it would have been adorable.)

Raphael’s empty hands hover in the air where the shape of Crowley had been. He doesn’t surge after the demon, though it certainly looks like he wants to. His eyes are wide and moon-like and strangely bereft.

Crowley straightens his shirt with anxious yanks of his trembling hands. His gaze darts around the room, lights upon Aziraphale and then away again and then back, as if it has no safe place to land. 

Aziraphale waves away the sword. (It settles, surprisingly, against the wall behind the till. Apparently it has had enough of War.) 

He reaches instead for Crowley, whose hand is a more perfect fit than any God-given gift on any day. 

The poor dear’s pulse is rabbiting, one of those silly human idiosyncrasies he and Aziraphale have both adopted, but it begins to slow when Aziraphale tangles their fingers together and squeezes. He doesn’t know what it is that’s happening, what could have Crowley so out of sorts, but one thing is for certain. 

_Our side,_ Aziraphale thinks at him firmly. _Whatever may come, I’m here with you._

Almost immediately, Nanael eels around to press in against Crowley’s free side, eyeing Raphael with intense distrust. Gremory is shoulder-to-shoulder with Aziraphale, stiff and unbreathing. Only Murmur seems to be unaffected by the tension in the room, though with Murmur it’s rather hard to tell. 

“I believe Mr Darcy is running late for his appointment at the groomer’s,” Aziraphale says lightly, breaking up the stand-off he’s found himself in. “Why don’t you three gather up his things while I arrange for a cab?” 

Gremory darts a sidelong look at him. Her eyes, normally a handsome dark green, are turning a sickly shade of neon that would likely cause flash burn in anyone unfortunate enough to make unwitting eye contact. It’s as easily a defensive mechanism as Crowley’s fangs and scales, only springing out when she’s angry or afraid. 

“Maybe one of us ought to stay,” she says despite herself, protective in her own way. 

Nanael opens their mouth to agree— loudly and at length, by the looks of it— and Aziraphale is almost sorry to squash a rare and shining instance of accordance between the two, but needs must. 

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” he says firmly. It’s his _I’m Sorry But We’re Closing For The Day, No More Sales, Please Find Your Way To The Exit_ voice. “Because this is nothing to be worried about. Isn’t that right, Crowley?”

“Right,” the demon says hoarsely. Then he clears his throat, and gives Nanael a playful nudge with his elbow. “Just a visit from an old friend, Feathers. That’s all.”

“See? Now off you pop.”

Gremory and Nanael look reluctant, then disgruntled, and then downright churlish, but they do eventually peel away and shuffle off in the direction of the stairs with Murmur in tow. 

“Mr Darcy had an appointment?” Crowley asks when they’re gone. 

“He does now,” Aziraphale replies. He pulls an appointment card that hadn’t existed twenty seconds ago out of the inner pocket of his coat with a performative little _ta-da,_ and Crowley darts a shining look at him— charmed, as always, by Aziraphale’s more devious miracles. 

And then his eyes slide forward again, towards Raphael, who is waiting rather good-naturedly on the other side of the room. By unspoken agreement, nothing else is said or done until Gremory, Nanael, Murmur and an absurdly large cat carrier have made their ungainly way out the front door. 

With a snap of his fingers, Crowley locks it, and flips the sign to Closed. Then he rubs a hand over his mouth and looks as though he’s got no idea what his next move is.

“I’m sorry,” Raphael says at once. He folds his hands together, and then wrings them, and it’s a more human gesture than Aziraphale was expecting from one of Heaven’s lot. “To have— arrived so suddenly, and— frightened your friends. It wasn’t my intention to cause any trouble. I only just heard about Armageddon, you see, and—”

Aziraphale can’t help but interrupt. “You _just_ heard? That was thirty years ago.”

Raphael looks both politely confused and also nervous about making even more of a bad impression by asking a stupid question. He is remarkably expressive, especially given how tempted Aziraphale is to lump him in with Michael and Sandalphon and the like, who only seem to take honest delight in victory or violence, and don’t seem to know what to do with the muscles in their faces otherwise.

“Ah,” Raphael says slowly. “Is thirty years very long? I’ve been living outside of time since the War. This is all very new to me.”

Crowley makes a harsh sound, a confused collection of vowels more than anything. 

“ _That’s_ why you haven’t been around?” he demands. “I asked everyone, looked everywhere, had the Erics keep an eye out for you, but nothing ever came of it. No one had ever seen you. For _Someone’s_ sake, I was afraid you— ngh. But I thought, surely we would have heard if an archangel bit the dust, right? It was such a big deal when your brother did it, after all. And I would have found you in Hell, I _know_ I would have. So if you weren't dead, and you didn’t Fall, then I thought...” 

He grinds his teeth, so hard a muscle in his jaw jumps, and he looks as though he would be pacing the floor if he wasn’t tethered to Aziraphale’s side by his deathgrip on the angel’s hand. 

“Then I thought you must not want to see me anymore,” he manages to bite out at last. “Not like this.”

 _Oh_ , Aziraphale realizes belatedly. He wants to rattle himself for being so slow. _They were friends once._

Raphael’s expression is so transparent that Aziraphale can practically see his heart break in real time. He does rush forward now, one, two, three involuntary steps before he can marshal control of himself again. His eyes are wet, the human corporation’s biological response to what must surely be pain, while on another plane of existence, his limitless trueform is twisting and bowing in grief beyond a mortal’s comprehension. It is hard to tell which is harder to watch. 

“No,” he says hoarsely. “It wasn’t that at all. Believe me, please. I didn’t _know._ ”

Aziraphale’s heart goes out to him, and he knows that Crowley, empathetic sometimes to the point of self-destruction, must be feeling it, too. 

“You were _gone_ ,” Raphael goes on, more vehemently. “They told me that there would be nothing left of you. They told me a demon was a husk of its former self, that nothing good could be left in them once their Grace was burned out. They brought me the wounded and showed me what damage Hellfire could do and I believed them. I was such a fool.”

This is the self-loathing that Aziraphale is familiar with. Even secondhand, it’s a bitter taste on his tongue. Millennia of believing in the good in Heaven even when they proved time and time again to be neutral at best and vengeful at worst. Putting them on a pedestal, to the detriment of his own morals, his own pride, and the feelings of his dearest friend. 

As hard as it is to break free of those chains in the first place, it is somehow harder to look back and accept the subservient creature you had allowed yourself to become.

Aziraphale recognizes this self-loathing, and Crowley must see it, too. He weathered millennia of Aziraphale’s misplaced loyalty and managed never to be petty or cruel about it. He saw firsthand how painful that faith could be.

That morning in Golgotha, when they both watched a cross go up on the hill, Crowley had been cutting toward him at first, bristling with grief and frustration, Aziraphale’s orders to stand aside and bear silent witness rubbing him the wrong way. But when that poor boy started to scream and Aziraphale started to cry, Crowley’s sharp edges softened. He let Aziraphale hide his face in Crowley’s robes, his thin hands against Aziraphale’s back and the nape of his neck the only solid and reassuring things left in the world. _Only one of us has to watch,_ Crowley said, _it doesn’t have to be you._

It was the first time they had ever swapped shoulders; the first tentative stone in the foundation of the Arrangement; and the first time Aziraphale realized, _Oh, he’ll let me do this._ No one had ever given Aziraphale respite like that before. He wasn’t supposed to need it.

And now, just like back then, Crowley’s better nature is getting the best of him. He’s relenting, and probably he didn’t want to hold these walls and batten these doors in the first place. His face is going soft and forgiving like it has done after a thousand arguments over a thousand shared bottles of wine; a softness and forgiveness that implies the anger was never true or lasting to begin with. 

Certain now that there’s no danger here, Aziraphale thinks it’s probably past time for him to step out.

“I’ll go make a pot of tea,” he says. “Why don’t the two of you sit down?”

Crowley clutches him tighter for a split-second and seems to search his face. 

“Did he ever hurt you?” Crowley whispers fiercely. “Was he ever like the others?”

Left unsaid is _I’ll turn him away if you say the word._ Aziraphale’s heart is tight and seemingly attempting to wedge itself up inside his throat. He lifts Crowley’s hand to his mouth for a kiss. 

“Oh, my darling, no. It’s quite alright. Talk to him.”

Conversation starts up as he leaves the room, stilted on both ends. When Aziraphale is halfway up the stairs, he hears Crowley snap, “Don’t call me that, it’s not my name anymore,” and Raphael— the _archangel Raphael_ , how absolutely absurd are their lives— stumble over himself in his haste to apologize. 

It makes Aziraphale smile, because he recognizes the empty bluster of a demon who could never allow himself to be soft or forgiving out loud where anyone might hear, who simultaneously enjoys keeping people on their toes. He wishes Raphael good luck.

But as he closes the door of the stairwell behind him and turns toward their oft-used kitchen to make good on his offer of tea, an unfamiliar touch lands on his arm. He jumps in surprise, but already Raphael is lifting his hand away in silent, earnest apology.

“What— but you—” Discombobulated, Aziraphale gapes at the other angel for a moment before biting out, “What are you doing here? I _just_ left you downstairs with my husband!”

Raphael’s head tips to one side, bright interest darting through his eyes like minnows. He visibly makes a mental note to return to that statement.

“I can be in two places at once,” he says by way of explanation, as if it’s not really worth talking about. “I often need more hands for healing. Ka— _Crowley_ will notice after a moment, though, so I must be quick.” 

His gaze is suddenly intense and searching. Aziraphale shuffles self-consciously, feeling frumpy and trivial as he smooths down his old waistcoat. He has never borne well under scrutiny.

“I wanted to thank you,” Raphael finally says, solemnly. “For doing what I didn’t. For loving him all this time.”

Aziraphale looks up at him, mouth open in surprise. And then he closes it, and feels it form a deep frown, and the words well up inside him in indignation, tripping right out past his lips before he can stop them.

“It’s not as though it was a favor to you, or to anyone else,” he snaps. “I love him because I _know_ him, and after knowing him, how could I not? You hardly need to thank me for something I would have done anyway.”

But rather than take offense, this strange houseguest only brightens.

He smiles with his whole body, the way Aziraphale simply can’t imagine any of the other archangels doing. It does remind him, somewhat vaguely, of a time when Heaven was kinder, when Gabriel would preen Aziraphale’s wingfeathers with unending patience no matter how often he got them all ruffled again, when closeness like that was more commonplace.

It’s as if Raphael has made of himself a time capsule, and the warmth and light of the past is retained within him. And Aziraphale doesn’t know him, not at all, but he has heard the stories. He saw the way Crowley flew into his arms. He is looking at the brightness and beauty of a creature who clung so hard to love that he fell six thousand years behind everyone else. 

And he thinks he can see it; how Raphael and Aziraphale’s own Crowley could have been friends once. They are both so stupidly stubborn when it comes to their people. They both love the same way Raphael smiles, with their whole bodies.

“Can I ask you,” Raphael says, and seems to lose his courage and then find it again. “How badly did I fail him?” 

This, at least, has an easy answer.

“You didn’t fail anyone, my dear,” Aziraphale says. He reaches out this time, puts a hand over the nervous tangle of Raphael’s, as gently as if he were soothing Murmur from one of his nightmares. “You were grieving. Had _I_ lost him,” he adds, voice catching at the very idea, remembering the years and years spent agonizing over the gift of Holy water, the bath waiting for Crowley after the world didn’t end, “I can’t imagine I would have fared any better.” 

Raphael is watching him closely again. If the two of them were different people, Aziraphale would almost be tempted to think Raphael was hanging on his every word. As it is, he manages to smile, and pats the archangel’s hands bracingly. 

“What matters is that you’ve made it here now. Even if all isn’t forgiven yet, it will be. We’ve all the time in the world.”

Whatever else might have been said is interrupted by Crowley’s thundered “OI!” from downstairs. 

_Ah_ , Aziraphale thinks ruefully, as Raphael flicks him a panicked wave and then disappears, _we’ve been found out._

He sets himself to the calming task of preparing tea the human way. The ever-vigilant wards are a reassuring hum against his senses, and the walls of the shop that have kept an eye on them for the past two-hundred and some odd years are better than any castle bastion or Jericho wall. 

Aziraphale can feel the familiar auras of three of his young charges and a highly unamused cat sneaking back into the shop through the sidestreet door. (He has the sneaking suspicion that Mr Darcy never made it to his appointment in the first place.) Warlock is still in a tidy little restaurant across town, having lunch with his parents under a useful glamor that hides his unchanging youth from them, almost certainly texting Nanael under the table as talk turns to cumbersome things like current politics and local sports teams and the weather. He is probably even now planning his swift escape. 

And darling Crowley is, as always, close by; reclaiming a love thought lost, a friend who cared about him deeply enough to make time itself redundant. 

It’s enough to make an angel lift his eyes to the ceiling and say, “You knew all along that we would end up here, didn’t You?”

She doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t bother Aziraphale the way it used to. 

The tea is ready; he takes it downstairs to his family. There are always the right number of cups.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew !! im not sure that this is where i thought this story was going to go, but i think we got to where we needed to be. thank you all so much for reading xx


End file.
